Ten years ago, Canadian billionaire and Maccabi Tel Aviv FC owner Mitchell Goldhar promised to take action against racism among the fans of his club.
In the summer of 2014, the Jerusalem Post reported that Maccabi fans had directed racist chants against one of their own players, Maharan Radi, during a training session.
In a statement, Goldhar said:
“Hatred, intolerance or abusive behavior against anyone on the basis of their race is malicious and morally corrupt [...] Racism at large is not my specific responsibility, though I will stand strongly against it. But when racism is directed at any individual or organization for which I am specifically responsible, particularly at Maccabi Tel Aviv, I will use every instrument and resource available to me to protect them.”
He continued:
“I have instructed the legal adviser to take all steps necessary to identify and prosecute any individual involved, directly or indirectly with racist behavior affecting Maccabi Tel Aviv. Further, any individual involved with racist behavior of any variety is at odds with Maccabi Tel Aviv’s principles and thus by definition cannot be a supporter or fan of our team.”
In 2019, Radi explained that some of his teammates tried to talk to the supporters who had directed the racist abuse against him. Radi said that a few days later, the team captain told him: “There’s nothing we can do, they just hate Arabs.”
Fast forward to 2023, and according to a report by the New Israel Fund (NIF), Maccabi racked up the second-highest number of reports of racist chanting during the 2022-2023 season, behind only Beitar Jerusalem, whose racist “ultras” group, La Familia, is notorious in Israel and the rest of the world.
The NIF explained: “Fans are not deterred from violating Israel’s laws against racist chanting, largely because these laws were not enforced.”
Then along came a fixture in Amsterdam.
‘Something Positive About Israel’
Goldhar, a real estate tycoon credited with bringing Walmart to Canada in the 1990s, took over Maccabi Tel Aviv FC in 2009.
Goldhar has also maintained ties to Canada. Besides leading real estate companies, he sat as a board director for Indigo Books & Music Inc., but did not stand for re-election last year, according to a shareholder notice for the company’s 2023 annual meeting. He is currently listed as a director for Onex Corporation, a private equity firm, on the company’s website.
Indigo has been the target of pro-Palestine boycott campaigns, as the respective founders of both Indigo and Onex, Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz, are founders and directors of the charity HESEG Foundation, which provides scholarships for “lone soldiers” who volunteer to fight in the Israeli military.
A May 2006 article published in the Jerusalem Post explained that Goldhar was among “an impressive coterie of Jewish and non-Jewish friends” who joined Reisman and Schwarz on a trip to Israel that spring.
The purpose of the trip, the Post explained, was to give Reisman and Schwarz’s guests “a better sense of Israel’s vulnerability, the democratic and moral principles it upholds - and its opportunities.”
Years later, Goldhar would express a similar hope that his team could serve as a positive ambassador for Israel to the rest of the world.
In 2015, the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported that as a “long standing supporter of Israel,” Goldhar “was happy to find a means of expressing his Zionism in a way that touched Israelis where they lived – through their support for the country’s premier soccer team.”
“Millions of European soccer fans would see an impressive team from Israel, which says something positive about Israel at a time when we don’t always get a positive press,” Goldhar told CJN.
Under Goldhar’s ownership, Maccabi would enjoy a run of success on the pitch, winning several Israeli championships, state cups and a handful of “Toto” league trophies.
It also had the opportunity to compete with footballing giants at European tournaments, including Amsterdam’s Ajax FC on November 7.
Trouble In Amsterdam
A recent report submitted to Amsterdam city council indicated that tensions in the Dutch capital began after Maccabi fans tore down and burned Palestinian flags, chanted racist songs against Arabs, and assaulted a local taxi driver.
Video footage showed a crowd of Maccabi fans chanting, “Let the IDF win, and f— the Arabs!,” in reference to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which to date has killed at least 43,764 people, including 16,765 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and is being examined as a potential case of genocide at the World Court. In Amsterdam city centre, Maccabi fans were also filmed chanting “f— you Palestine!” and, “No children left in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, local police banned pro-Palestine demonstrations from taking place near the Johan Cruyff Arena, Ajax’s home stadium that is named after the legendary Dutch footballer whose son, Jordi, served as Maccabi’s head coach from 2012 to 2018.
An Amsterdam city councillor, Jazie Veldhuyzen, told Al Jazeera: “They began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started. As a reaction, Amsterdammers mobilised themselves and countered the attacks that started on Wednesday by the Maccabi hooligans.”
Before the game kicked off, Maccabi fans at the stadium disrupted a minute’s silence honouring victims of recent flooding in Spain, whose prime minister has urged the international community to stop selling arms to Israel.
After the game, which saw Ajax defeat the Israeli visitors 5-0, Maccabi fans made their way back to the city centre and some used sticks to commit acts of vandalism, according to the city council report.
Some of the fans were attacked, reportedly leaving five hospitalized and an estimated 30 others with “minor injuries.” Fans were transported back to Israel on two “rescue flights” chartered by an Israeli airline.
The previous time Maccabi fans were in Amsterdam, they were filmed singing the so-called “rape song,” a chant directed at a rival Israeli team. The song includes the lyrics: “You’re the Arabs’ whores. We are ashamed of you [...] We will f— you, We will f— you, and then we will drink your blood.”
Trouble among Maccabi supporters had also broken out at a previous Europa League fixture. In Athens, video footage showed Israeli fans beating up a man holding a Palestine flag, according to Greek media.
Nothing New
Racism in Israeli football and at Maccabi Tel Aviv in particular is nothing new. The NIF has labelled Maccabi fans as among the “most racist” in Israel for decades, and well before Goldhar became the club’s owner.
Some of the club’s fans have also been staunch defenders of Israel’s right-wing political establishment. In 2020, a group of Maccabi supporters reportedly used broken bottles and batons to attack demonstrators protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following Goldhar’s takeover of the club, Maccabi launched a campaign pledging to “combat racist chanting in Israeli football, at stadiums in general and at Maccabi Tel Aviv matches in particular.” An accompanying video posted to YouTube showed Maccabi players from different ethnic backgrounds describing the negative impact of racist chants.
But problems persisted.
In 2015, Maccabi supporters unfurled a banner reading “Refugees Not Welcome,” and the following year an on-pitch fight broke out between officials and staff from Maccabi and a team described as Israel’s “only Arab premier league club,” Bnei Sakhnin.
According to Maccabi’s website, Goldhar was in Amsterdam for the game against Ajax and spent the day after the match meeting with injured Maccabi fans at their hotels, reportedly “enquiring of their condition and well-being.”
The team’s CEO, Ben Mansford, was quoted saying: “We all know Mitch’s background; we all know how supportive he is of this country. It must be another very sad to [sic] for him, but we couldn’t have a better owner to lead from the front at these times.”
The Maple sent questions to an email associated with Goldhar’s real estate company, SmartCentres, and to Maccabi Tel Aviv FC, but did not receive any response.
Politicians Fell In Line
In response to the violence in Amsterdam, politicians from Israel and countries allied with Israel immediately characterized the attacks as driven by “antisemitism” and amounting to a “pogrom.”
In an official statement, Netanyahu drew a comparison between the attacks on Maccabi fans and the legal challenge against Israel through the International Court of Justice, where Israel is currently on trial for genocide.
“In both cases, there was dangerous antisemitism, the goal of which was to render helpless the Jews and their state, to deny our state the right of self-defense and to deny our citizens their very right to life,” Netanyahu said.
On November 8, the day after the match, Netanyahu compared the violence involving Maccabi fans to the Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazis in 1938.
Canadian political leaders from all parties issued similar statements that omitted any mention of the behaviour of Maccabi fans.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterized the attacks as “disgusting antisemitism,” while Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre invoked the Kristallnacht comparison, stating that, “Today, we see it again in a chilling echo as antisemitism and violence against the Jewish community is thriving.”
Provincial premiers in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia all issued similar statements denouncing the attacks as antisemitic, and leaving out any mention of the Maccabi fans’ behaviour in Amsterdam.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was among the only elected officials to acknowledge the Maccabi fans’ racist chants. He condemned “the violence that happened in Amsterdam,” and stated: “Violence is wrong. Yelling anti-Arab chants is wrong. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinian racism must be fought.”
Michael Bueckert, vice president of the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), told The Maple that the statements from most politicians entirely ignored the context of the violence, and were quick to embrace the Israeli narrative as fact.
“It’s obviously not a positive story, but certainly much more complicated than the one-sided narrative that was being pushed, whitewashing the very real anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism involved in this incident,” he explained.
The misrepresentation, he added, bolstered a pro-Israel narrative that casts undue suspicion on any pro-Palestine activism in the rest of the world.
“Canada’s political class is warning of a new Holocaust in Amsterdam, while we’re literally watching a genocide slowly unfold step by step in front of our eyes in Gaza by the Israeli government, and supported by pro-Israel groups,” he added.
“No one puts an ounce of horror towards these atrocities being conducted by Israel, but they will express horror at a soccer brawl gone bad.”
Alex Cosh is the news editor of The Maple.
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